


In a Bind

by Cryptid495



Category: Final Fantasy XIII
Genre: AU - Civil Wars and Crystal Prisons, An absolute stinker to tag accurately, F/F, Fang Cares Too Much To Let It Go, Light Bondage, Lightning (Final Fantasy XIII) Needs Therapy, Lightning (Final Fantasy XIII) Refuses To Go To Therapy, Queerplatonic Relationships
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-13
Updated: 2021-03-14
Packaged: 2021-03-21 03:40:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,312
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30015570
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cryptid495/pseuds/Cryptid495
Summary: "Light, these panic attacks..." Fang stroked her hair, and Lightning heard the words and barely processed them, pulse still thundering. "I know you'd rather die than go to therapy. But if it was me, who offered to help? Would you maybe give it a try?"
Relationships: Lightning/Oerba Yun Fang
Comments: 4
Kudos: 9





	1. Still

“Five minutes.”

Lightning sits, and does not move. Eventually, she is meant to be able to sustain this for thirty minutes. She counts ten heartbeats and already knows that even these five minutes will be far too long.

But this is Fang, and true to her word she is sitting cross-legged in front of her and she is not moving.

It’s a trust exercise, Fang says, but there’s another layer of something behind her countenance when she says it. Lightning can’t help but see it, categorise it with every other line of tension and clenched jaw and choice of word that tells her when someone is lying.

But this is Fang, and true to her word she is not moving.

And neither is Lightning, though she knows full well her heart is pacing her ribcage now.

But this is Fang, and if anyone has proven themselves worthy of Lightning’s trust it is her.

“Four minutes,” she murmurs.

How was that only one minute?

Lightning breathes out, hard, pushing everything stale out of her system. She forces her diaphragm to stay still until she hears her blood rushing in her ears, heartbeat racing to distribute oxygen that she is forcibly withholding, and only then does she let herself breathe deep.

She sits, and does not move, because she must not.

It is an old Pulsian trust exercise, Fang says. It is the building block for the foundation of Old Grand Pulse’s spiritual treatments for warheart, for PTSD.

Lightning worries her bottom lip between her teeth, but lets go at a simple look from Fang. Fang knows she will bite if she thinks too long, that she will draw blood if she drives herself to fear.

“Three minutes.”

This is excruciating. But Fang is right. Lightning would rather die than go to some stranger with a wall full of textbooks and a certificate. Conversely, Lightning would rather bare her fears to Fang than die.

She sits, and does not move, because she cannot.

It is not just for warheart, Fang explains, when Lightning accuses her of hiding something. It is not just for warheart, but you must promise me that you will not be embarrassed out of trying it because of its other purpose.

Lightning faces the fact that she had a panic attack over forgetting to return a damned book to a damned library, and she promises.

It is also used to build trust between partners, Fang says. To build a foundation that leaves all partners certain that their others will respect their bodies and their autonomy. That is not how we will be using it, but it is something that I was worried you would not like.

Lightning shifts her wrist. The binding moves, and the discomfort stops.

“Two minutes.”

This is embarrassing. She squirms again under Fang’s level gaze. Her attention is not the problem; it is the unavoidable impression of scrutiny. Lightning knows that Fang is not watching her like her COs, like the numerous religious and cultural heads who betrayed not only Lightning but all of Cocoon. But she has only ever received sustained attention as a symptom of predatory intent, and it is  _ difficult _ to shake that off.

Fang pauses the timer on her phone, and Lightning immediately realises that her biceps are burning.

“You’re struggling against the restraint. You want out,” Fang said. “My function in the Bind is to notice that, and to give you two choices. We can stop now, and try again tomorrow. Or I can sit closer to you and we can resume the timer.”

Lightning willed her arms to relax, and breathed deep again. “I can’t fail before we’ve even reached five minutes. Can we resume, please?”

Fang shuffled forward. “There’s no failure here,” she said. “That’s where the trust comes in. It is always and entirely your right to decide when we’re done. Also, you’ve been silent so far. That’s very you, but I’ll remind you that we’re both allowed to talk, yeah?”

Lightning nodded, and Fang resumed the timer.

“Am I allowed to ask you if you’ve ever done… this?”

“You are.” Fang smiled. “Vanille and I served as each other’s foils when we went through the Bind. I can’t talk about her experience, but my own experience is mine to answer questions about, if you want to ask them. One minute.”

“How long did you last? How long did you take to get to thirty minutes?”

Fang closed her eyes for a moment, and a surge of worry ran through Lightning.

“I’m not going to give you exact numbers, okay? I know how you think, Light. I know you’ll compare yourself. But I will tell you that I got a lot worse before I got better. And I had to use the  _ thy’la _ crutch for a long time.”

“The  _ thy’la _ crutch?”

“An old Oerban variation. If the Bind itself was too overwhelming even in proximity, you were allowed physical contact until you felt you didn’t need it any more. Some... expression of presence. For me, Vanille lay with her head in my lap. I couldn’t play with her hair or anything, not with the Bind, but it was enough to ground me.”

And Fang’s phone beeped.

“And done. I’m going to untie you now, alright?”

Lightning nodded, and just a moment later, she was free.

“Alright,” Fang tossed the rope to the other end of the bed, then took Lightning’s hand and led her over to the table. She rummaged around the little studio flat’s kitchen alcove for a moment, brought back a glass of water and a bowl of some kind of mixed cereal. Sat down opposite Lightning, and gestured. “As much or as little as you like,” she said. “The Bind is more stressful than anyone is ever inclined to admit. You’ll need to refuel.”

Again, Lightning was forced to concede the point that Fang had a better idea of her limitations than she did.

The thin, reedy feeling dispersed as she ate and drank. She didn’t finish it all, but she knew that even just a few days ago, she would have had far less and insisted she was fine.

“You did well, Light. I’m proud of you. I know how hard it is to listen to someone else, to trust someone else over yourself. You did so well.”

“...thank you.” It came out stretched and rough, and Lightning felt herself turning red.

Fang took her hand, and squeezed. “You’re safe here, remember? I know it feels strange, to hear words like these. There’s a lot of emotions rolling around up there, yeah?” And she gently tapped Lightning’s temple with her other hand.

She just nodded, and squeezed Fang’s hand right back. There was a hot, cloying mess in her throat that prohibited her from speaking.

“You wanna watch something? The Bind says we should talk about how all of that felt for you, but we don’t have to do that right away. Whenever you’re comfortable with it, yeah?”

Lightning just nodded again.

It wasn’t until they were bundled up together in Pulsian quilts that smelled like Fang, snacks and beers on the table, ten minutes into the first episode of  _ Bridgerton _ , that Lightning let herself start to cry.


	2. Cord

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In Cocoon, the Ancient Civilisations Museum is largely full of stolen artifacts and terrible colonialist takes on the old worlds. Lightning and Fang sometimes spend their Saturdays there and in the coffee shop next door.

“So from what I can squeeze out from between the lines,” Lightning says, putting down slightly battered library copy of  _ Old Grand Pulse, the Borderless World _ , “Old Cocoon didn’t have the emotional vocabulary, but through a modern Cocoon lens, pretty much every interpersonal relationship on Pulse was queerplatonic.”

Fang looks over from her newspaper, very slightly guarded. “Yes, I think that’s about right.”

“You’re worried. Hmm. Worried that I might see that as a violation of our early friendship?”

“Trying not to be.” Fang folds up the newspaper, sports section fully abandoned. “Cocoonian-Pulsian partnerships do have a bit of a track record of burning up, it’s hard not to have that plucking at the back of my mind.”

“I thought I never understood friendship, you know. Not until I met you. I thought for the longest while that you were just the first person I actually  _ liked _ , without a sense of duty telling me to do so. Now I’m thinking I never understood friendship because… this is what it felt like it always should have been, and nobody else felt that way. You never staked any claim on me, and that felt  _ right _ . I’ve never known anyone else I was comfortable sharing everything with, because they would all superimpose the… what was it called…?”

Fang pushes one of the books -  _ Stepping Off The Relationship Escalator _ \- across to Lightning.

“Yeah, that’s it. I ever opened up to anyone, they’d assume we were moving up.”

_ “ _ Ah, yeah.” Fang chuckles. “ _ ‘But I unlocked your Tragic Backstory, aren’t we meant to kiss now?’ _ Nah, fuck off Brendan.”

Lightning snorts. “Fuck off indeed,  _ Brendan _ .”

Half a cupcake later, Lightning looks up. “I think I just found the problematic chapter,” she said.

“Oh aye?” Fang is three pages into the  _ Law and Courts _ supplement and shows no signs of slowing.

So Lightning decides to mess with her a little.

“ _ The Bind was a transgressive, overtly sexual ritual,” _ She reads with a straight face,  _ “That placed one person at the mercy of another. With a standard setup only seen in the forbidden codexes of Cocoon’s sexual deviants, the Bind and the study of it are both taboo. I shall however attempt to unravel some of its myste-” _ She looks up at Fang’s face and snorts at her bright red embarrassment.

“Gods, I’d forgotten how  _ awful _ that chapter really was.” Fang mutters, glaring at the book.

“Cocoonian colonial racism at its finest. Skip the chapter?”

Fang scowls. “I really want to say yes, but from what I remember it does draw some solid parallels with modern Cocoonian models of consent, and I trust you to be able to filter out the bullshit.”

And so Lightning keeps reading. It proves more difficult than she thought, even with the absurd tone of the old academic’s focus on the sexual, to completely detach his projections from the scrap of red rope tied around her wrist. What is meant to be a discreet reminder, to serve as a way to ground herself if she needs it, is starting to feel more like a signal flare as she keeps reading through his interpretations.

_ It is this author's opinion that the relationship between some of the more comprehensive Bindings and medieval Japanese Kinbaku is worthy of investigation. _

She closes the book around an  _ Ancient Civilisations Museum _ bookmark - the white and wine red one, the only one she’d liked in the gift shop - and puts it down to clear her head. She turns her chair a little, and looks out at the street. Specks of drizzle dot the glass; the people outside are putting up umbrellas and hurrying to cover, and a few scattered people who are dressed for high summer just glare at the sky and carry on their way.

She wonders how many of them are offering prayers to Eden, or Orphan, to clear the skies. How many of them remember any of Old Cocoon the way she does - or the way Fang remembers Old Grand Pulse.

“Why don’t you write a new book?” she finds herself asking. “If this is the best Cocoon has to offer,” and she tapped the book twice, “Then gods know we need a new one. You and Vanille are primary sources, after all.”

Fang sighs. “We’ve considered it, you know? But every time we get into talking about how we could actually do it, I… shut down. Old Grand Pulse betrayed us when the Core Council put us in crystal and left us to rot. I can’t bring myself to feel that I owe it anything, when I remember that. And beyond that, you remember what it was like when they dug us up. Two bona fide Old Grand Pulsians! Sing us your lullabies for our entertainment, why don’t you? Vanille could just about deal with that sort of attention. I’ve been running from it ever since.”

"Mmm." They lapse into silence again. Lightning watches the city, picks bits off the last of her white chocolate and raspberry cupcake and eats them. "Hey, Fang," she says as the other woman raises her Mayan hot chocolate to her lips.

Fang hums an acknowledgement into her mug.

"What's Kinbaku?"

Fang chokes on her drink. She just barely keeps it from hitting the books by containing it in the mug, which unfortunately turns the blast back around on itself and all over her. She's dripping with it, there are marshmallows everywhere, her eyes are streaming with the effort of the cough and the chilli in the drink, and although she has already grabbed a handful of napkins and is helping her clean up, Lightning cannot stop laughing.

"You are going to be the death of me," Fang grumbles.

Lightning giggles. She realises that she's giggling. And the warmth of Fang's amused exasperation, the texture of the red rope around her wrist, they dispel something that she is certain would have silenced itself in shame just a few weeks ago.

Fang’s eyes widen as she undoubtedly comes to the same conclusion. And a smile grows under speckles of hot chocolate, and her voice thrums under all the humming and clatter of this little coffee shop next to the Ancient Civilisations Museum.

“Look at you go,” she murmurs. And she stands, and comes round to Lightning, and takes slow careful hold of her.

Because Lightning is crying again. Even with the laughter, even though her face aches from the smile. And even though people are looking, even though some cruel person might in theory record this, or spread rumours, or weaponise it against her in one of a hundred other ways, she does not care.

Fang holds her close.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> oh good, the brainrot won't leave. i'm sorry but also not sorry for the angst. lightning has a lot of hurt to process, you know?
> 
> my subconscious keeps worldbuilding this AU even when I'm not paying attention. pretty sure this is going to be a long meandering one.

**Author's Note:**

> Honestly not sure whether this is done or not. It stands alone, but also I have brainrot and a few vague ideas for future scenes. 
> 
> what do i doooo


End file.
